ISSIONS 
JTICS 





THE 
SITUATION 

IN 
CHINA 



A RECORD 

OF CAUSE 

AND EFFECT 

BY 

ROBERT E. 

SPEER 



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MISSIONS AND POLITICS 
IN CHINA 

The Situation in China 



A RECORD OF 
CAUSE AND EFFECT 



ROBERT E. SPEER 



This article has besn republished from a larger 
■work, " Missions and Politics in Asia," as it 
was _ deemed expedient to put this chap- 
ter in concise form for popular reading. 




New York Chicago Toronto 

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\^ 



Introduction 



e t5 



This is not a favorable time to form a judgment 
of Cliina. The disturbed condition of tlie coun- 
try, tiie anxiety felt in Western lands as to the 
safety of their representatives, the heat of passion 
aroused-by bloodshed, even in the absence of dec- 
laration of war, combine to distort our view. 
Yet every one is interested in China now, and many 
will think -at this time of their relations to the 
millions of this great empire who will not do so 
in times of quietness. 

The following discussion aims to set forth the 
situation in China, not so much as it appears in 
any one time of critical excitement, but as the en- 
during factors of the problem which China pre- 
sents have characterized it from the beginning of 
China's contact with the West, and will continue 
to characterize it for years to come. The Taip- 
ing rebellion accordingly has not been introduced. 
Though a gigantic movement, it sank back quietly 
into the gigantic bosom of the Chinese people. It 
was a symptom, however, of the mobility of this 
immobile race, and also in hard historic fact of the 

5 



Introduction 

readiness of the Chinese to adopt Christian doc- 
trine and to adapt it, also. The leader of the 
Taipings was a country school-teacher, a Chris- 
tian convert. As the movement grew, religious 
worship was kept up in the camp; the Sabbath 
was observed; the Scriptures were read and ex- 
pounded; hymns and doxologies were sung in 
honor of the Triune God, and the multitudes were 
exhorted by their leaders to honor and obey God. 
Hung Siu Chuen soon had his head turned by his 
military successes, and excess and fanaticism 
characterized his rebellion. But still as men think 
upon it and the way it had broken with all the 
shackles of old thought and old ways in China, 
they wonder whether the West did well in sup- 
pressing it. Dr. W. A. P. Martin who lived 
through the years of the rebellion in China, can- 
not rid himself of this doubt. " More than once, 
when the insurgents were on the verge of suc- 
cess," he has written, " the prejudices of short- 
sighted diplomatists decided against them, and an 
opportunity was lost such as does not occur once 
in a thousand years." ^ 

Yet in "slow-moving," "stagnant" China, 
such an opportunity did come again in less than 
forty years, in another movement, whose lessons 

1 A Cycle of Cathay, p. 142. 
6 



Introduction 

need to be kept in mind in the following discus- 
sion, when the Emperor joined the party of the 
Reformers, led by Kang Yu Wei, and poured out 
during the year 1898 edict after edict proposing 
measures which were certain to lead to the reno- 
vation of the empire. Railroads unlocking the 
whole land were approved. Factories and mines 
were to be promoted. Social reforms were com- 
mended, and footbinding was attacked by Vice- 
roy Chang Chih Tung and other officials all over 
the empire. The country was to be opened ; tem- 
ples were to be changed into Western schools; 
the right of petition was extended to all ; a free 
press was to be encouraged. The futile and ob- 
solete subjects were to be eliminated from the 
government examinations and that powerful en- 
ginery was to be used to lift the whole nation into 
new life. But too much had been proposed for 
the conservative party to endure. The influence 
of the Western legations would have sufficed to 
support the Emperor and his advisers, to moder- 
ate their projects and to secure a gradual adop- 
tion of the proposed reforms, but that influence 
was withheld.^ The Reformers fled or were be- 

* " The pity of it is that the foreign legations, which ought to 
have jumped at the opportunity, gave no assistance whatever to 
the Emperor and his reforming friends. . . . No one ever 
expected that this dynasty could produce a man so worthy to 

7 



Introduction 

headed or expatriated, and the Dowager Empress 
resumed authority. Whether the Emperor is 
alive or dead no Western man knows. 

We have sown our seed and we are reaping 
our harvest. We preferred the Dowager Empress 
to the Emperor, and we are enjoying now the 
spirit of reaction and bigotry which is congenial 
to her, and the bitter consequences of its su- 
premacy. For, however ripe the poverty of the 
people in Shantung through the Yellow River 
floods, and their irritation at the brusque and un- 
conciliatory ways of Germany, may have rendered 
the province for the spread of the Boxer Move- 
ment, it could have been suppressed if the Chinese 
officials had wished to suppress it. But the West 
had supinely tolerated if it had not facilitated the 
victory of conservatism and hostility to foreigners 
at Peking, and local and provincial officials took 
their cue from the capital. Undoubtedly the 
movement has now gone far beyond the will or de- 
sire of the Empress and her less fatuous advisers. 
They fear the reparation which some of the 
European powers will exact in the spirit of 
vengeance and wrath. 

rule, nor will it ever produce another ! Yet he seems to have 
found not one to help him among the foreign officials in Peking. 
Reform has no real interest for them. The pity of it 1 " — 
Shanghai Daily News, Nov. 15, 1898. 



Introduction 

And this has been one of the blunders we have 
made from the beginning in dealing with China. 
We have not observed equity!* Would any civ- 
ilized state have tolerated the seizure of a section 
of a province as compensation for the murder of 
two missionaries ? We have spoken of revenge 
and have exacted it. ''But it is said "China is not 
a civilized state." Precisely sof Another blun- 
der of our dealings with China has been that we 
have not treated her as a civilized state when we 
should have done so, and have treated her as a 
civilized state when we should not have done so. 
We should have recognized in our diplomatic re- 
lations with her that though senile and dignified, 
she is yet a minor and incompetent. *The Euro- 
pean nations have gone beyond the bounds of 
proper international intercourse with China, when- 
ever it was to their interest, and have refused to 
go beyond them when it was to China's interest 
that they should do so." 

There are some who say, however, that the 
trouble is due to the missionaries. It is not po- 
litical and it is not commercial. It is religious. 
Well, it would be folly to deny that missions 
have produced a profound impression upon China 
and that they have shaken the superstitions and 
prejudices of the people in some parts of China 



Introduction 

to their foundation. It is interesting to see this 
recognized by that large class of critics who only 
recently contended that the missionaries were 
making no impression at all. But this trouble is 
not religious in any direct sense. The mission- 
aries are the most widely distributed foreigners in 
China and they come in contact with hundreds 
of thousands who never see other foreigners 
and accordingly they feel more sharply and 
quickly than any others any outbursts of anti- 
foreign hostility. Now some of this hostility is 
undoubtedly due to the doctrines held by the 
missionaries. Some of these violate some of the 
immemorial customs and opinions of the Chinese. 
It would be impossible to carry on in any land 
such a tremendous propaganda as missions have 
carried on in China without creating much an- 
tagonism. Yet this is easily exaggerated; for 
the missionaries are tactful. They live among 
the people. As a simple fact they have the 
friendship of their neighbors and usually the con- 
fidence of the people. They live down prejudice 
and suspicion. There is objection to them on the 
ground of their religion, although chiefly on the 
ground of slanderous misconceptions of it, but the 
chief objection to them is as representatives of the 
Western political powers. For the former they 

10 



Introduction 

must accept full responsibility and bear it quietly, 
relying upon their message and the Saviour 
whom they preach. But for the odium in which 
they may be held as mere avant couriers of the 
political and commercial projects of Western 
powers they cannot justly be blamed. If any of 
them have unjustifiably or unwisely appealed for 
political protection or used political influence, let 
the individuals bear the responsibility. The en- 
terprise disavows it. It is a spiritual movement. 
It aims at spiritual results and it proposes spirit- 
ual means for their accomplishment. '^ That is all 
that need be said here regarding the political 
rights of missionaries. 

Yet something more could be said. Surely one 
of their rights is that their work should not be 
wrecked by undesired interference. That is a 
point primarily, however, for the Roman Catholic 
missionaries. And one of their priests presents 
it in Les Missions Catholiques, June 26, 1891; 
"It is of no use to hide the fact: China obsti- 
nately rejects Christianity. The haughty men of 
letters are more rancorous than ever; every year 
incendiary placards call the people to the exter- 
mination of the foreign devils; and the day is ap- 
proaching when this fine Church of China, that 

has cost so much trouble to the Catholic aposto- 
11 



Introduction 

late, will be utterly destroyed, in the blood of her 
apostles and her children. Whence comes this 
obstinate determination to reject Christianity? 
It is not religious fanaticism, for no people are 
so far gone as the Chinese in scepticism and in- 
difference. One may be a disciple of Confucius 
or of Lao-tze, Mussulman or Buddhist, the 
Chinese Government does not regard it. It is 
only against the Christian religion it seeks to de- 
fend itself. It sees all Europe following on the heels 
of the apostles of Christ, Europe with her ideas, 
her civilization, and with that it will have abso- 
lutely nothing to do, being rightly or wrongly, 
satisfied with the ways of its fathers. The question 
therefore has much more of a political than a re- 
ligious character, or rather it is almost entirely po- 
litical. . . . The efforts of the missionaries 
should therefore be directed toward separating 
their cause entirely from all political interests. 
From this point of view I cannot for my own part 
,but deplore the intervention of European govern- 
ments. Nothing could in itself indeed be more 
legitimate, but at the same time nothing could be 
more dangerous or more likely to arouse the 
national pride and the hatred of the intellectual 
and learned classes. . . . Rightly or wrongly, 
China will not have European civilization which 

12 



Introduction 

in combination with Ciiristianity, is to tliem 
simply the invasion of Europe. Let us then dis- 
tmctly separate the religious from the political 
question." 

It is a pity that this priest's views do not repre- 
sent his Church. No one may know how far 
the recent expansion of the political rights of 
Roman Catholic missionaries (an expansion ob- 
tained for them, at whose instance I do not 
know, by the French minister but refused by the 
Protestant missionaries) practically allowing them 
to assume judicial functions and to demand of 
Chinese officials what previously they could only 
request if they could secure at all, has been re- 
sponsible for the recent outbreak. 

I think I need only emphasize two things in 
bringing this introduction to a close. ^ First, mis- 
sions are not responsible for these present diffi- 
culties. They produced the Reform Movement. 
The Reformers acknowledged that. The Em- 
peror himself, it was said, was on the verge of 
issuing an edict in favor of Christianity. If the 
Western Powers allowed that to collapse and the 
reactionary forces to resume control, missions 
cannot be reprimanded because reaction seized 
its opportunity. Second, missions, at least re- 
sponsible Protestant missions, have not been 

13 



Introduction 

seeking for political intervention, for enlarge- 
ment of rights or for the forcible support of their 
work by the Western powers. As for the 
agencies which have expressed such desires * and 
have been gratified, let the history of three gener- 
ations of our intercourse with China speak, — the 
Opium and the Arrow Wars, and the appropria- 
tion of Manchuria and Shantung. 

R. E. S. 

' " The key of the position, which is a politico-commercial 
one, is that government should be strong, resolute, and inspire 
confidence. This is absolutely essential. If that be wanting 
as it has been hitherto, then it is needless to discuss further 
steps. But, provided such confidence is established, then the 
British merchant must be encouraged and supported through 
thick and thin. British enterprise must be pushed inland into 
every crevice, and every opportunity must be utilized in com- 
mercial and industrial matters." — Colqukoun^s China in 
Transformation, p. 164. 



U 



LECTURE III 

CHINA 

"There are men of that tyrannical school who 
say that China is not fit to sit at the council 
board of the Nations, who call them barbarians, 
who attack them on all occasions with a bitter 
and unrelenting spirit," said Anson Burlingame in 
New York, on June 23, 1868, when he was rep- 
resenting the Chinese Government as head of the 
Embassy which introduced China to the Western 
world when at last the long closed doors were 
forced open. And "these things," continued 
Burlingame, "I utterly deny. I say on the con- 
trary, that that is a great and noble people. It 
has all the elements of a splendid nationality. It 
has the most numerous people on the face of the 
globe; it is the most homogeneous people in the 
world; its language is spoken by more human 
beings than any other in the world, and it is 
written in the rock;^it is a country where there is 
a greater unification of thought than in any other 
country in the world ; it is a country where the 
maxims of the great sages, coming down memo- 

15 



Missions and Politics 

rized, have permeated the whole people until their 
knowledge is rather an instinct than an acquire- 
ment. It is a people loyal while living, and 
whose last prayer when dying is to sleep in the 
sacred soil of their fathers. Mt is a land of scholars 
and of schools — a land of books, from the small- 
est pamphlet up to voluminous encyclopedias. 
It is a land, sir, as you have said, where the 
privileges are common ; it is a land without caste 
for they destroyed their feudal system two thou- 
sand one hundred years ago, and they built up 
their great structure of civilization on the great 
idea that the people are the source of power. 
That idea was uttered by Mencius two thousand 
years ago, and it was old when he uttered it. 
The power flows forth from that people into 
practical government through the cooperative 
system, and they make scholarship a test of 
merit, I say it is a great, a polite, a patient, a 
sober and an industrious people; and it is such a 
■ people as this, that the bitter boor would exclude 
from the council hall of the Nations. ^ It is such a 
Nation as this that the tyrannical element would 
put under the ban. They say that all these people 
(a third [!] of the human race) must become the 
weak wards of the West ; wards of Nations not 
so populous as many of their provinces; wards 

16 



China 

of people who are younger than their newest vil- 
lage in Manchuria. I do not mean to say that the 
Chinese are perfect; far from it. They have their 
faults, their pride and their prejudices like other 
people. These are profound and they must be 
overcome. They have their conceits like other 
people, and they must be done away ; but they 
are not to be removed by talking to them with 
cannon, by telling them that they are feeble and 
weak, and that they are barbarians." ^ 

With these fair words from our countryman of 
florid speech, the most impressive and curious 
nation on the earth was introduced to national in- 
tercourse with other peoples. She had been 
talked to with cannon. Otherwise she would 
have continued to refuse introduction. But the 
persuasive iron speech of the Opium and Arrow 
Wars was seductive and the mighty people came 
out of their seclusion. 

I have called China impressive, curious and 
mighty. These three adjectives belong to China 
and they belong in the same degree to no other 
people. 

The Chinese people are a mighty people. The 
idea that they were mighty in war was finally 
abandoned three years ago, but until the army 

* Nevius's China and the Chinese, p. 453. 

17 



Missions and Politics 

and navy of Japan showed how hollow and vain 
were all the Chinese military and naval preten- 
sions, China was reckoned a sleeping giant who 
had been not inactively preparing even in sleep 
for future struggle. Had not Chinese armies 
conquered the whole heart of Asia ? Had they 
not driven Russia out of the region South of the 
Amoor? Had they not held the dependencies 
against all foes ? Had they not made the French 
war in Tonquin a scandal and almost a shame to 
France? No testing had ever come. What 
China was or could do was enfolded in mystery. 
It is not strange that Great Britain looked upon, 
her as her best ally against Russian aggression, 
and that all the politics of the East turned upon 
the conviction of China's formidable character as 
a warlike nation. All this is past now, and the 

' Western people smile at their folly in having been 
so deceived, and sneer at the pathetic weakness 
of the Celestial Giant. But this is after the nar- 

• row judgment of men whose gods are made of 
saber slashes and running blood. China's unfit- 
ness for the modern science of butchery which 
we call war, and her weakness in such work, 
while manifesting the radical defects of incapacity 
for organization and exact obedience, but bring 
into clearer relief her mighty adaptation to the 

18 



China 

arts of peace, and her genuine power in those 
spheres which I confess seem to me better spheres 
for the exercise of power than the fields of organ- 
ized murder or national land robbery or the lust 
of pride. 

* In the more worthy regards China is a mighty 
nation. No people are more frugal, more con- 
tented, more orderly, more patient, more industri- 
ous, more filial and respectful among themselves. ' 
"They have been for ages the great centre of light 
and civilization in Central and Eastern Asia. They 
have given literature and religion to the millions 
of Korea and Japan." Even a generation of 
Western civilization has not shaken Chinese in- 
fluence off the thought and politics and ethics 
of Japan. Printing originated with the Chinese, 
and was used by them hundreds of years before 
it was known in the West. The magnetic needle, 
gunpowder, silk fabrics, chinaware and porcelain 
were old tales with the Chinese before our civi- 
lization began. Our latest ideas were wrought 
out by the Chinese ages ago, — Civil Service exami- 
nations and assignment of office for merit and 
tested capacity, trades unions and organizations, 
the sense of local responsibility in municipal ad- 
ministration. Already numbering one-fourth the 
population of the earth, China ought to be able, 

19 



^N 



Missions and Politics 

Dr. Faber says,^ "comfortably to support at least 
five times the number of its present inhabitants," 
taking Germany as a basis of judgment, for the 
average population of Germany is three times 
denser than the average population of China, and 
China's physical and climatic conditions are more 
favorable than those of Germany, while the 
Chinese are more frugal than the Germans. In 
business, manufactures or trade no other people 
can compete with the Chinese on equal terms. 
Wherever equal terms prevail, they are driving 
the foreign merchants out of their markets and 
ports, and make other labor impossible. And 
when, as is sure to happen, their own or foreign 
capitalists drawing raw materials from China, 
manufacture their cottons, iron, silk, woolens and 
merchandise in Chinese mills with Chinese labor, 
those who now regard these Chinese as weak be- 
cause they cannot fight with guns and ships will 
recognize that there are other standards than these 
, by which the power of a people is to be gauged. 
Perhaps one reason why the Chinese have been 
so underjudged and certainly one reason for the 
attitude of contempt and ridicule civilized nations 
have ever taken toward them is found in their 
curious peculiarities ; for they are, as has been said, 

' Faber's China in the Light of History, p. 2. 
20 



China 

the most curious of peoples. But another reason 
is found in our misunderstanding of them. As 
Dr. Martin once said, "They are denounced as 
stolid, because we are not in possession of a me- 
dium suificiently transparent to convey our ideas 
to them or to transmit theirs to us ; and stigma- 
tized as barbarians, because we want the breadth 
to comprehend a civilization different from our 
own. They are represented as servile imitators, 
though they have borrowed less than any other 
people; as destitute of the inventive faculty, 
though the world is indebted to them for a long 
catalogue of the most useful discoveries ; and as 
clinging with unquestioning tenacity to a heritage 
of traditions, though they have passed through 
many and profound changes in the course of 
their history."^ And we have misunderstood the 
Chinese in this way not because of any want of 
will to understand them, but because from our 
point of view the Chinese character and mind are 
so perplexing, almost inexplicable. Some have 
even denied in their confusion that there is a com- 
mon character or mind. Mr. Henry Norman in 
Peoples and Politics of the Far East, has done so, 
contending that there is no real unity in China; 
but those who know China better, hold a differ- 

• Martin's The Chinese, p. 228. 
21 






<v 



Missions and Politics 

ent view. " China is not," one of them declares, 
"an immense congeries of polyps each encased 
in his narrow cell, a workshop and a tomb, and 
all toiling on without the stimulus of common 
sympathy or mental reaction. China is not 
. . , like British India, an assemblage of tribes 
with little or no community of feeling. It is a 
unit, and through all its members there sweeps 
the mighty tide of a common life." ' 

And yet no one has ever described this life. 
Those who have come nearest to doing so have 
confessed their failure. They have hit off char- 
acteristics but not the character. Mr. Smith 
frankly calls his book which is the best ac- 
count of Chinese character we have Chinese 
Characteristics, and one of the fairest as well 
as shrewdest writers on China, Mr. George 
Wingrove Cooke, the special correspondent of 
the London Times, with Lord Elgin's Mission, 
doubted whether the Chinese could be under- 
stood and described by the Western mind. "I 
have in these letters," he wrote, "introduced no 
elaborate essay upon Chinese character. It is a 
great omission. . , . The truth is that, I have 
written several very fine characters for the whole 
Chinese race, but having the misfortune to have 

' Martin's The Chinese, p. 229. 
22 



China 

the people under my eye at the same time with 
my essay, they were always saying something or 
doing something which rubbed so rudely against 
my hypothesis, that in the interest of truth I 
burned several successive letters. I may add 
that I have often talked over this matter with 
the most eminent and candid sinologues, and 
have always found them ready to agree with me 
as to the impossibility of a Western mind form- 
ing a conception of Chinese character as a whole. 
These difficulties, however, occur only to those 
who know the Chinese practically; a smart 
writer entirely ignorant of his subject might 
readily strike off a brilliant and antithetical an- 
alysis, which should leave nothing to be desired 
but truth."' 

Who of us, for example, can honestly appre- 
ciate or understand the point of view of a people 
among whom human life is regarded as these 
illustrations show ? A man throws himself into 
a canal and is dragged out. But not to be frus- 
trated in this way, simply sits down on the bank 
and starves himself to death to be revenged 
against somebody who has cheated him and 
whose good name will be tarnished in this way. 
One day, as a Chinese paper relates, a sow be- 

' Cooke'i China^ p. 7. 
23 



» « * 



Missions and Politics 

longing to a Mrs. Feng, happening to knock 
down and slightly injure the front door of a 
Mrs. Wang, the latter at once proceeded to 
claim damages, which were refused. Where- 
upon a fierce altercation ensued, which termi- 
nated in Mrs. Wang's threatening to take her 
own life. Mrs. Feng, upon hearing of this dire- 
ful threat, resolved at once to steal a march upon 
her enemy by taking her own life, and so bring- 
ing trouble and discredit upon Mrs. Wang. She 
accordingly threw herself into the canal. And 
these are not uncommon or forced illustrations. 
They are part of the common routine of life.^ 

And the occasional cruelty of the Chinese is 
beyond belief. "1 know of a case in a wealthy 
Mandarin's family," writes one old missionary, 
" where the only grown daughter showing signs 
of leprosy, a slave girl was bought and butch- 
ered, and the patient fed with the flesh of the 
poor victim."^ How is this to be understood 
among a people of high moral standards, and 
ancient and boasted civilization ? 

And their government contains equally curious 
features; men appointed to expensive office with- 
out salary and then punished for squeezing; lofty 



• Norman's Peoples and Politics of the Far East, p. 278. 

' Faber's Famous Women of China, p. 4. 

24 



China 

political ethics combined with the most corrupt 
official class in the world ; vast numbers of eu- 
nuchs, 3,000 in the palace of the Emperor alone, 
under a system which proclaims the sonless man 
to be an outcast soul, doomed eternally ; a pro- 
fessed atheism, or at best agnosticism combined 
with the most silly superstitions. This, for ex- 
ample, is one of the decrees for the year 1896, 
taken from the Imperial Gazette, "A shroud in- 
scribed with the T'olo prayers, the work of the 
Tibetan Buddhist Pontiff, is granted to the de- 
ceased noble Tsai Tsin," This is another of less 
recent date: "Tso Tsung t'ang refers for favor- 
able consideration an application made to him 
that a certain girl who died in 1469 may be can- 
onized. Wherever rain has failed, prayers of- 
fered up at the shrine of the girl angel at Pa-mi- 
shan have usually been successful. An inquiry 
into the earthly history of the girl angel shows 
that she was born in the capital of Kansuh, and 
during her childhood lived an exemplary life. 
She was guiltless of a smile or any sort of levity ; 
but, on the contrary, spent the livelong day in 
doing her duty. Arrived at maidenhood, her 
mother wished to betroth her, but the girl refused 
to marry, and betook herself to the Pa-mi hills, 
where she gave herself up to religious exercise 

25 



Missions and Politics 

and nourished herself on spiritual food, until she 
was transformed into an angel. After she had 
left this world, the people of the locality found 
that an appeal to her was invariably answered, 
and a temple was built in her honor. During the 
recent dry season, prayers for rain were always 
granted, thus showing that though hundreds of 
years have gone by, the maiden still watches over 
the locality. The memorialist is of opinion that 
she may well be included in the calendar, and 
proposes that for the future, sacrifices may be 
offered to her every spring and autumn. Re- 
script : Let the Board of Ceremonies report upon 
the matter."* Other edicts provide for the offer 
of incense to certain gods, the selection of lucky 
days for various observances, the deification of a 
certain maiden, etc. 

Yet these curious features must not be so ex- 
aggerated as to make China appear ludicrous. 
The West has erred in this. China's great pre- 
•tensions, her theatricalism, her hypocrisy were 
understood by all, and her absurdities have been 
allowed to fill such a place that China has been 
rather the laughing stock of the nations. But the 
Chinese are a profoundly impressive people. 
Nowhere else in the world has the idea of social 

' Faber's Famous Women of China, p. 6. 
26 



China 

or family responsibility been so developed. For 
example, an idiot son murders his father, and an 
imperial edict records that the son for such a 
dreadful crime has been punished by slow execu- 
tion, and that the whole village has been destroyed 
as sharing in the offence; for had its influence 
been proper and properly exerted, no boy reared 
in the village would have committed such a crime. 
Nowhere else in the world has the idea of filial 
piety been so emphasized and honored, and it is 
a wonderful sight to see a whole vast Nation testi- 
fying to its real belief in immortality by the annual 
sacrifices to the spirits of the departed. It is true 
that the position of woman is subordinate and 
menial, and that she is valued most as the possi- 
ble mother of sons. As the Book of Odes says: 

" The bears and grisly bears 
Are the auspicious intimations of sons ; 
The cobras and other snakes 
Are the auspicious intimations of daughters ; 
Sons shall be born to them ; 
They will be put to sleep on couches ; 
They will be clothed in robes ; 
They will have sceptres to play with ; 
Their cry will be loud. 

They will be hereafter resplendent with knee-covers, 
The future kings, the princes of the land. 
Daughters shall be born to them ; 
They will be put to sleep on the ground ; 
They will be clothed with wrappers ; 
They will have tiles to play with. 
It will be theirs neither to do wrong nor to do good. 
Only about the spirits and the food will they have to think, 
And to cause no sorrow to their parents." ' 

* Faber's The Status of Women in China, p. 5. 
27 



Missions and Politics 

And yet marriage has been ever regarded by the 
Chinese as a sacred institution, and has been care- 
fully defended ; and it may be doubted whether 
in any State, save the Jewish, as much has been 
made of the family, or it has been so truly the 
foundation of the State, which the Chinese call the 
Family of the Nation, while "prefects and magis- 
trates are popularly styled parent officials." ' And 
as to this State which has existed for forty cen- 
turies, and would exist for forty more if left to 
its desired seclusion, where in all history can any- 
thing more impressive be found than it, or than 
those great statements of its political science 
which Confucius framed: "If government is 
exercised by means of virtue, it is made as stead- 
fast as the North pole. Mere external govern- 
ment (i. e. orders) is opposed to virtue. Filial 
piety and brotherly love are necessary; besides 
these two, there are no special rules. Govern- 
ment consists altogether in regulating, i. e. set- 
tfng to right. This is achieved when the prince 
is prince, and the minister is minister; when the 
father is father, and the son is son. But the prince 
must desire what is good and the people will be 
good ; therefore capital punishment is not neces- 
sary. Princes ought to go before the people. 

' Von MSllendorff' s Family I.a-u) of the Chinese, p. 4. 



China 

Then the people follow. The necessary thing is 
to have sufficiency of food for the people, weap- 
ons and confidence. If necessary, weapons can 
be dispensed with, then food, but without mu- 
tual confidence, especially of the people toward 
the superiors, there is no standing for the State. 
When those who are near are made glad then 
those who are far, come themselves. It should 
be the care of the Government to call everything 
by its right name, so that no wrong be secreted 
behind a surreptitious and hypocritical name. 
Good government depends chiefly upon the ex- 
cellence of the prince, besides also upon qualified 
officials, in the election of whom the sovereign 
must take an interest. If the individual states, 
as also the imperial domain are swayed in this 
way, the peaceful order of the whole Empire fol- 
lows as a matter of course, especially if a virtu- 
ous emperor be at the head of it."^ 

Surely it is fitting to apply to this great people 
the terms mighty, curious, impressive. How in 
the operations of Providence has such a people 
been produced, and for what unseen, divine pur- 
pose ? There are two questions here — the ques- 
tion of origin and the question of destiny. 

First, then, the Chinese race is what it is to-day 

' Faber's Systematical Digest of the Doctrines of Confucius, pp. 94-98. 
29 



Missions and Politics 

because of its isolation and its education. By her 
geographical position China has been separated 
from the whole world, as the Romans said of 
Britain. The mountains of Tibet rose as an in- 
surmountable wall between China and the great 
wave of Western conquest which swept away 
the empires of Babylon and Persia, and later 
under the Mohammedans established itself for 
seven centuries in India. On the North and West 
stretched vast wastes of desert, untrodden and 
impassable, and the unploughed sea separated 
the Empire from all contact on the East. The 
Chinese language seemed yet further to isolate 
the Nation and to separate the people intellectu- 
ally from their fellow men; while it also bound 
those who used it closer together. A phonetic 
rather than a symbolic language would have led 
as in Europe, to the development of different 
languages in different provinces or states, and so 
would have prevented the growth of a great 
Chinese race. As it is, geographical isolation 
shut China off from contact with languages like 
Sanscrit and Assyrian which would have led to 
modifications, and ignorant of any approxima- 
tion to phonetic principles, China grew with 
one written and literary language, and in the 
main, a common spoken tongue which were 

30 



China 

alike added bonds within and added barriers 
against those without.^ 

But isolation alone could not have produced 
the Chinese people. It merely provided those 
potential conditions in v^hich Chinese education 
could have free and uninterrupted play upon the 
nation. As Wells Williams points out, "Their 
literary tendencies could never have attained the 
strength of an institution if they had been sur- 
rounded by more intelligent nations ; nor would 
they have filled the land to such a degree if they 
had been forced to constantly defend themselves 
or had imbibed the lust of conquest. Either of 
these conditions would probably have brought 
their own national life to a premature close." 
In these literary tendencies the moral and social 
teachings of their great sages and rulers, their 
systems of education, the real kinetic energy 
which has fashioned and preserved the Chinese 
people is to be found. In the Classics compiled 
by Confucius all wisdom is contained, according 
to Chinese opinion, and the mastery of these 
Classics, memorizing them and learning to use 
their materials according to artificial and fine 
drawn rules, is preparation for life, training for 
public office and title to honor and glory. All 

'Wells Williams' Middle Kingdom, Vol. ii., pp. 18&-190. 
31 



Missions and Politics 

preferment is based on success in the Govern- 
ment examinations in the knowledge and use of 
the Classics. Some Chinese historians maintain 
that appointment to office was first conditioned 
on competitive examinations by the Emperor 
Shun in the year 2200 b. c. Though this may 
be doubted, it is certain that now the system 
penetrates the whole Empire, and thousands and 
hundreds of thousands, even millions compete 
for the degrees, the lowest, or "Budding Gen- 
ius" corresponding rudely to our B. A., the sec- 
ond, "Promoted Scholar" a sort of M. A., the 
third, "Fit for Office," a sort of D. C. L, or LL. 
D. To which may be added a fourth, or "Han- 
lin " degree, by which the successful scholar be- 
comes a member of the Hanlin Academy or 
"Forest of Pencils." About one per cent, of the 
rough scholars get the degree of "Budding Gen- 
ius," and from the fact that 25,000 with this de- 
gree will compete at one provincial capital for 
^he second degree, one gains some idea of the 
number of candidates. About one per cent, 
of the "Budding Geniuses" become "Fit for 
Office."^ 

The subjects of these examinations for cen- 
turies have of course furnished the staple of 

* Martin's The Chinese, pp. 39-84. 
32 



China 

thbught of the Chinese people, and the Classics 
have thus been woven into the very grain and 
texture of the Chinese race. They have memo- 
rized them and the commentaries upon them and 
have looked upon their absorption and the model- 
ling of life upon them, as the consummation of 
all duties. How thoroughly they have been ex- 
pected to do this such questions as these from 
the examination papers will indicate: " How do 
the rival schools of Wang and Ching differ in re- 
spect to the exposition of the meaning and the 
criticism of the Book of Changes ?" " The art of 
war arose under Hwang te, forty-four hundred 
years ago. Different dynasties have since that 
time adopted different regulations in regard to 
the use of militia or standing armies, the mode 
of raising supplies for the army, etc. Can you 
state these briefly ? " Or, note such a subject for 
an essay as this passage from the Analects of 
Confucius. "Confucius said, ' How majestic was 
the manner in which Shun and Yu held pos- 
session of the Empire, as if it were nothing to 
them.' Confucius said, ' Great indeed was Yaou 
as a sovereign! How majestic was he! It is 
only Heaven that is grand and only Yaou corre- 
sponded to it! How vast was his virtue! The 
people could find no name for it.' " A few years 

33 



Missions and Politics 

ago the University of London admitted to its in- 
itial examinations annually about 1,400 candi- 
dates, and passed one-half. The Government 
examinations of China at the same time admit- 
ted about^2,ooo,ooo annually, and passed one per 
cent.^ 

This great device has worked for centuries now. 
As Dr. Martin has pointed out, "It has served 
the State as a safety valve, providing a career for 
those ambitious spirits which might otherwise 
foment disturbances or excite revolutions. It 
operates as a counterpoise to the power of an ab- 
solute monarch. With it a man of talent may 
raise himself from the humblest ranks to the 
dignity of viceroy or premier. It gives the Gov- 
■ ernment a hold on the educated gentry, and binds 
them to the support of existing institutions." 
And its influence on the character and opinion of 
the people has been simply enormous. That 
"the Chinese may be regarded as the only pagan 
nation which has maintained democratic habits 
under a purely despotic theory of Government; 
that this Government has respected the rights of 
its subjects by placing them under the protection 
of law, with its sanctions and tribunals (and 
keeping them there) and making the sovereign 

'Idem, pp. 51, 52. 
84 



China 

amenable in the popular mind for the continuance 
of his sway to tiie approval of a higher Power 
able to punish him; that it has prevented the 
domination of all feudal, hereditary and priestly 
classes and interests by making the tenure of of- 
ficers of Government below the throne chiefly de- 
pend on their literary attainments ; " — all this is 
due to the influence of their educational system 
and the body of teaching it has ground into the 
Nation/ 

On the other hand, the weaknesses and inef- 
ficiencies of China to-day are in great measure 
directly traceable to the same influence and teach- 
ing. The literati, "the most influential portion 
of the population," are the most conservative, 
bigoted and narrow-minded. "The Chinese 
have drawn their self-conceit and contempt for 
all foreigners as barbarians from the ancient 
works." " The scholar of the first degree," says 
their proverb, "without going abroad is able to 
know what transpires under the whole heaven." 
Confucius lived six centuries before Christ. To 
make what he knew and the wisdom of those 
who went before him the total of all available 
wisdom and to school men into this conviction 
until it is ineradicable has been one result of the 

'Wells Williams' Middle Kingdom, Vol. ii., p. 191. 
35 



Missions and Politics 

Chinese system of education. It has limited 
knowledge and life to the level of the far past, 
and has made fidelity to this old antediluvianism 
the test of all things. Chinese education has 
isolated China in time as it was of old isolated by 
language and in space. Confucianism has shown 
itself as stereotyped and sterile as Islam. 

This is not an uncharitable judgment. History 
and the present evidence of life have passed it. 
Confucianism has limited the horizon of men to 
the wisdom of twenty-five centuries ago. " The 
past is made for slaves," said Emerson, and 
whatever truth is in his saying applies to the 
Chinese. Confucianism recognizes no relation to 
a living God. It relegates all contact with 
Heaven even to an annual act of the Emperor. 
It ignores the plainest facts of moral character. 
It has no serious idea of sin, and indeed no 
deeper insight at all. It cannot explain death. 
It holds truth of light account. It presupposes 
and tolerates polygamy and sanctions polytheism. 
It confounds ethics with external ceremonies and 
reduces social life to tyranny. It rises at the high- 
est no higher than the worship of genius, the 
deification of man.^ 

Indeed the Chinese themselves long ago passed 

* Faber's Systematical Digest of the Doctrine of Confucius, pp. 134-131. 
36 



/ 



China 

judgment upon the inadequacy of Confucianism, 
and with that utter disregard of logical consis- 
tency which is another of their inexplicable di- 
vergences from the ways of the West, added to 
their Confucian beliefs the most un-Confucian 
ideas of Taoism and Buddhism. The Chinese 
have never been capable, however, of holding 
either of these religions in even an approximately 
pure form. Taoism was in Lao Tse's hands a 
high transcendental idealism, but his followers re- 
duced it to alchemy and necromancy. Buddhism 
was a sort of atheistic mysticism, but in China it 
became a system of magic or spiritual thauma- 
turgy. Any line of division between these two 
became obscured, and both were absorbed by the 
Chinese to supply in a measure those spiritual 
longings which Confucianism had been futile to 
suppress, and to which it had no ministry. But 
Taoism and Buddhism while having firm hold 
upon the Nation, and tinging the life of every 
man, supplying those elements of superstition 
and real religion which the agnosticism of Con- 
fucianism ignored, have never been able to shake 
the older system, and have not modified in the 
direction of enlightenment and broader sympathy 
the education of the Chinese race. Isolated at 
the beginning, twenty-five centuries of narrow- 

37 



Missions and Politics 

ing discipline have separated the Chinese by a 
mighty chasm from other Nations and the sweep 
of human progress, holding them 

"Aloof from our mutations and unrest 
Alien to our achievements and desires." 

It is not at all strange that people of such a 
character and education should have assumed to- 
ward the rest of the world the attitude they have. 
Before the Western Nations molested them, their 
Empire was the mistress of all. The little king- 
doms round about she treated with patronage or 
contempt. When the Western Nations came, she 
judged them by her dependent tribes, and spoke 
to them as she had spoken to her tributary neigh- 
bors. "She assumed a tone of superiority, pro- 
nounced them barbarians and demanded tribute." 
This was due to her ignorance and conceit. Her 
conceit abides, and it is to be feared, so also does 
her ignorance. Thus the author of China's In- 
tercourse with Europe wherein the facts are 
given from the Chinese point of view, says, "As 
for the petty States of the German Zollverein 
. . . many of them are unknown even by 
name in the historical and geographical works 
accessible to us, and we have no means of estab- 
lishing the fact of their alleged existence ! " * A 

• China's Intercourse with Europe^ p. 114. 
38 



China 

correspondent of the London Times recently told 
of a conversation with some Chinese officials on 
the Tibetan border, in which reference was 
made to the capture of Peking in 1862 by the 
French and English. "Yes," said the officials 
laughing, "we know you said you went there, 
and we read with much amusement your gazettes 
giving your account of it all. They were very 
cleverly written and we dare say deceived your 
own subjects into a belief that you actually went 
to Peking. We often do the same thing." ^ And 
even in the famous memorial which was pre- 
sented in 1895, signed by 1,300 scholars who had 
taken the second degree and represented fourteen 
out of the Eighteen Provinces of China, and 
which urged a number of reforms, the establish- 
ment of banks and post offices, railways, encour- 
agement of machinery, mining, newspapers, 
education, etc., the following sentences occur, 
showing the most naive ignorance of the world. 
" Let the most advanced students of Confucian- 
ism be called up by the Emperor to the capital 
and given the Hanlin degree and funds to go 
abroad. If they succeed in establishing schools 
in foreign countries where are gathered 1,000 
pupils, let them be ennobled. Thus we shall take 

' Norman's Peoples and Politics of the Far East, p. 286. 
39 



Missions and Politics 

Confucianism and with it civilize all the barbar- 
ians, and under the cloak of preaching Confu- 
cianism, travel abroad and quickly learn the mo- 
tives of the barbarians and extend the fame of 
our country." 

These words of the i,joo scholars indicate an- 
other element of China's training and of the 
present situation. Not only are the Chinese a 
mighty, curious and impressive people whom 
Western Nations have misunderstood and de- 
spised, but the Chinese have also misunderstood 
as well as despised the Western peoples. Those 
same features of their character and education 
which make them so unintelligible to us make us 
unintelligible to them. The memorial of the 
1,300 scholars proposes that Confucian mission- 
aries be sent both to civilize the barbarians of the 
West, and to learn just what our motives are. 
From the Chinese point of view, these seem to 
me to be eminently just and reasonable proposi- 
tions. And even from an unbiased and interme- 
diate point of view it must be acknowledged 
that a candid comparison of Western and Chinese 
civilizations does not leave everything to be said 
on one side. With a pure Christian civilization 
Confucian civilization could not stand comparison 
lor a moment, but it can have its own word to 

40 



China 

say in any controversy with our actual present 
stage of civilization in the West. And as to 
Chinese confusion as to the real motives of West- 
ern Nations, who can wonder that they are an 
enigma to the Chinese ? Are they not to us ? 
Who can disentangle the sincere from the selfish 
and false ? " Your code of morals is defective in 
one point," said Li Hung Chang once, "it lays 
too much stress on charity and too little on jus- 
tice." Who can reconcile the professed motives 
of the Mission movement with the obvious pur- 
poses of European Governments } ""We know 
they are irreconcilable and do not try, but they 
are the double face of a single party to the Chi- 
neser Besides he cannot understand the restless- 
ness of the West, its unwillingness to stay at 
home, its constant spirit of disturbance, of change, 
the lust of innovation, its domineering impetu- 
ousness, its obtrusiveness, its irritating refusal to 
let China alone. Nor could we understand these 
things if we were in the place of the Chinese. 
Indeed even in our own place much of our spirit 
and of the spirit of our Western peoples is unin- 
telligible to us, save as the inherited genius of the 
race, and much of it as displayed in dealings with 
Oriental Nations from Turkey to China is as a foul 
stench in our nostrils. 

41 . 



Missions and Politics 

Here then have been all the elements of a most 
interesting situation which has altered but slightly 
since the gates of China were forced about fifty 
years ago. On one side a Nation numbering one- 
fourth of the human race, not comprehending, 
heartily despising the Western Nations, desiring 
to be let alone and to live on in the ancient ways 
of the sages. On the other, the forceful Nations 
of the West not comprehending China, viewing 
her ludicrously and with contempt, but insisting on 
intercourse, on equal terms, and demanding that 
China should forego her desire for seclusion and 
open to the world. This struggle and the forces 
which have entered into it, have constituted the 
last of the influences which have produced the 
China of our present history, until within the last 
few months the European Nations have threat- 
ened the integrity of the Eighteen Provinces. 
The want of proportion in our historical knowl- 
edge is in nothing more clearly shown than in our 
* ignorance of the steps in this great struggle, espe- 
cially of the real character and meaning of the 
Opium and Arrow Wars. The average student 
knows only, as the current oratory runs: "that 
Great Britain forced opium on helpless and protest- 
ing China at the mouth of her cannon," and 
scarcely stops to think of the deeper significance 

42 



China 

of those acts in the great movement which had to 
do with the welfare and destiny of one-fourth of 
the human race, yes and the welfare and destiny of 
perhaps two-fourths more. The first war, 1839- 
1 842, opened the five treaty ports of Canton, Amoy, 
Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai, ceded Hong Kong 
to Great Britain, authorized trade and recognized 
foreigners. "Looked at in any point of view," 
says the most solid writer on China, "political, 
commercial, moral or intellectual^ it will always 
be considered as one of the turning points in the 
history of mankind, involving the welfare of all 
nations in its wide-reaching consequences. . . . 
It was extraordinary in its origin, as growing 
chiefly out of a commercial misunderstanding; 
remarkable in its course as being waged between 
strength and weakness, conscious superiority and 
ignorant pride; melancholy in its end as forcing 
the weaker to pay for the opium within its borders 
against all its laws, thus paralyzing the little 
moral power its feeble Government could exert to 
protect its subjects; and momentous in its results 
as introducing, on a basis of acknowledged obli- 
gations, one-half of the world to the other, with- 
out any arrogant demands from the victors, or 
humiliating concessions from the vanquished. It 

was a turning-point in the national life of the 
43 



Missions and Politics 

Chinese race."^ The second war, 1857-1860, 
grew out of an occurrence of a most trivial char- 
acter, and was marked by the pursuit of the 
most petty, private and even unjustifiable ends ; ' 
but it resulted in the opening of nine more treaty 
ports ; it conceded the right to travel throughout 
the Eighteen Provinces, and contained a special 
clause giving protection to foreigners and natives 
in the propagation and adoption of the Christian 
religion. 

Now although troubles over opium were the 
occasion of the first war, the real issues were 
general trade intercourse and reciprocal and equal 
diplomatic relations as necessary thereto. "The 
merchants of Great Britain," said Lord Napier 
before the war, "wish to trade with all China on 
principles of mutual benefit ; they will never relax 
their exertions till they gain a point of equal impor- 
tance to both countries, and the viceroy will find 
it as easy to stop the current of the Canton River 
as to carry into effect the insane determinations 
of the Hong," (to resist these trade advances). 
Opium was an accident and not an essential of 
the wars. As a Chinese writer has said in a 
novel account of this matter, "It is plain that it 

'Wells Williams' Middle Kingdom, Vol. ii., pp. 463, 464. 

'Martin's A Cycle of Cathay, pp. 143-190. 

44 



China 

was not the destruction of the opium, but the 
stoppage of trade, which caused these Wars. 
. . . This was suificient to disappoint and 
provoke men who had come thousands of miles 
for the sake of gain. . . . Worms only ap- 
pear in a rotten carcase, and it was only when 
exaction followed exaction and justice was de- 
nied to creditors, that the foreigners turned upon 
us. War would have followed all the same even 
if the opium trade had been stopped ; and in fact 
opium only came because profits being impossi- 
ble by fair, the foreigners were driven to obtain 
them by foul means."* Some people argue that it 
was the granting of trade in the first instance that 
brought on our troubles. But this is absurd ; for 
China can do without foreigners, whilst foreign- 
ers are dependent upon us for tea and rhubarb, 
and therefore are at our mercy. All that is 
wanted is fair trade to secure their willing loy- 
alty."^ But it was not trade only. It was also 
the recognition of equality and respect that the 
Western Nations demanded. This the Chinese of- 
ficials had contemptuously refused. "The great 
ministers of the Chinese Empire ... are not 
permitted to have intercourse with outside bar- 

' Parker's Chinese Account of the Opium War, and China's Intercourse 
with Europe, p. 55. 

45 



Missions and Politics 

barians," said the Viceroy of Canton to the Eng- 
lish Envoy. In reporting the matter to Peking, 
the Canton Governor said, "On the face of the 
envelope (which the barbarian Envoy presented) 
the forms and style of equality were used, and 
there were absurdly written the characters ' Great 
English Nation.' Now it is plain on the least re- 
flection, that in keeping the central and outside 
people apart, it is of the highest importance to 
maintain dignity and sovereignty. Whether the 
said barbarian has or has not official rank there 
are no means of thoroughly ascertaining. But 
though he be really an officer of the said Nation, 
he yet cannot write letters on equality with fron- 
tier officers of the Celestial Empire." Later the 
Governor issued a paper deprecating the disturb- 
ance of trade and saying, "Lord Napier's pre- 
vious opposition necessarily demands such a mode 
of procedure, and it would be most right imme- 
^diately to put a stop to buying and selling. But 
considering that the said Nation's King has hitherto 
been in the highest degree reverently obedient, 
he cannot in sending Lord Napier at this time 
have desired him thus obstinately to resist. The 
some hundreds of thousands of commercial duties 
yearly coming from the said country concern not 
the Celestial Empire the extent of a hair or a 

46 



China 

feather's down. . . . But the tea, the rhu- 
barb, the raw silk of the Inner Land, are the 
sources by which England's people live and 
maintain life. For the fault of one man, Lord 
Napier, must the livelihood of the whole Nation 
be precipitately cut off .? . . . I cannot bring 
my mind to bear it."^ And this tone of con- 
tempt and insult continued without exception 
or relief. What could Western Nations do in the 
face of it ? They could quietly go home and 
abandon trade with China save on terms of in- 
feriority. China wondered that they so persist- 
ently refused to do this. But the passion for 
trade, and the trade God who rules the diplo- 
macy of nations was fiercer even in Western 
Nations than among the Chinese. They would 
trade, and they would trade on terms of self- 
respect, and to accomplish that in this century 
could only be done by war, and war that meant 
to China disgrace, the withdrawal of insult, the 
abandonment of her traditional attitude and the 
destruction of her isolated seclusion, and that 
could only leave with her ruling class the sting 
of defeat, the sense of doom and a bitter hatred 
of that restless, encroaching force that tears men 
away from the slavery of the past and thrusts 

•Wells Williams' Middle Kingdom, Vol. ii., pp. 468, 472. 
47 



Missions and Politics 

them out into the future, like Abraham, not 
knowing whither they go. 

This roughly is the general situation, and so 
much of history has been set forth in it because 
in China every present situation contains the past 
as its chief element. What is to grow out of this 
situation ? Whither is God leading the Chinese ? 
Is their day spent, their history done, or is there 
yet hopeior them ? 

First, there is'no hope for them in Confucian- 
ism. It has had free scope for twenty-five cen- 
turies, and while it has accomplished the results 
that have been recognized, it contains absolutely 
no hope for the future. Progress is impossible 
under it. It ties the race hand and foot and 
flings it back into a patriarchal dotage. As to 
Buddhism, while its superstitions and idols sup- 
ply what they can to meet the irrepressible spirit- 
ual needs of the people, its priests, as Eitel says, 
"Are mostly recruited from the lowest classes, 
and one finds among them frequently the most 
wretched specimens of humanity, more devoted 
to opium smoking than any other class in China. 
They have no intellectual tastes, they have cen- 
turies ago ceased to cultivate the study of San- 
scrit, they know next to nothing about the his- 
tory of their own religion, living together mostly 

48 



China 

in idleness, and occasionally going out to earn 
some money by reading litanies for the dead, or 
acting as exorcists and sorcerers or physicians. 
No community of interest, no ties of social life, 
no object of generous ambition, beyond the sat- 
isfying of those wants which bind them to the 
cloister, diversify the monotonous current of their 
daily life," while "the people as a whole have 
no respect for the Buddhist Church and habitu- 
ally sneer at the Buddhist priests." ^ As for Tao- 
ism the high and noble views of Lao Tse have 
sunk to the lowest oracularism, and its supersti- 
tions are only a grade below those of Buddhism 
with which now in China it is inextricably inter- 
woven. The most pitiably abject human being I 
ever saw was a Taoist priest, with long matted 
hair run through with straws, half naked, beg- 
ging in the streets of Peking. In her own reli- 
gions, there is no hope for China. 

Nor is there any in her political and civil insti- 
tutions. "They are rotten through and through, 
though sufficient for her old life and isolation, 
but she is not allowed her old life and isolation 
any longer. The introduction of mathematics 
and Western sciences and even questions as 
to the Bible into the competitive examinations, 
the throb of the railway past the graves of the 

' Eitel's Buddhism, pp. 33, 34. 
49 



Missions and Politics 

sages, the profile of the telegraph against the 
dragon outline of the hills, the hum of the spindle 
in the cotton mills, and engines in the silk fac- 
tories, and the ramifying filaments of Western 
trade introduce conditions for which the old 
forms and the old officials are unfit. It will be 
enough if they can keep up with the new times. 
There is no leading in them. 

And although we believe that God is in His 
heaven and all's well with His world, and that 
the conduct of European nations in China at the 
present time will in the end work into His mighty 
purposes, and indeed is working into those pur- 
poses even now, this seems to me a dishearten- 
ing quarter to which to turn for help and hope. 
Mr. Curzon may entertain the curious fancy of a 
secular redemption. "The best hope of salva- 
tion for the old and moribund in Asia, the wisest 
lessons for the emancipated and new, are still to 
be derived from the ascendency of British char- 
acter, and under the shelter, where so required, 
of British dominion."^ But where is the redemp- 
tive power that has regenerated Hong Kong and 
Singapore ? And how much salvation has come 
to Shanghai from Foochow Road ? Has French 
rule brought hope to Tonquin ? Has Spain given 

' Curzon's Problems of the Far East, new ed., p. 15. 
50 



China 

help to the Philippines ? Wherein has Borneo been 
redeemed by the Dutch or Bokhara by the Rus- 
sians ? If the real partition of China comes, as it 
may, and Russia takes Manchuria and Chili, and 
Germany Shantung, and England the valleys of 
the Yangtse and the West Rivers, and the whole 
body and heart of China lying between, and 
France Hainan and the southern section of 
Kwangtung and Kwang Si and Yunnan,^ — it will 
mean good I am sure, though what an ignomini- 
ous end of the Middle and Heavenly Kingdom it 
will be! — but it is not the direction in which one 
turns for help or hope, especially with the sounds 
of trade so filling the air, the clamor of the navies 
and the shouts of Prince Henry preaching the 
gospel of the consecrated person of the queer 
Emperor of Germany, and William's Minister of 
Foreign Affairs saying in the Reichstag "that 
Germany could no longer exclude herself from 
sharing the promising new markets. That the 
time had passed when Germany was content to 
look on and see other countries dividing the world 
among them, while Germany contented herself 
with a place in heaven. The intentions of Ger- 
many toward China were benevolent . . . 
but Germany could not permit China to treat 

• Martin's Cycle of Cathay, p. 399. 
51 



Missions and Politics 

German interests as subordinate to those of other 
nations." And the speaker concluded, the cable 
dispatch said, "amid long and loud applause by 
saying ' We will not put other people in the shade, 
but we claim for ourselves a place in the sun.' " 
That was a pertinent prayer of the Queen's 
Jubilee: — 

" If drunk with sight of power we loose 
Wild tongues that have not Thee i« awe- 
Such boastings as the Gentiles use 
Or lesser breeds without the Law — 
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
Lest we forget — ^lest we forget. 

" For heathen heart thaj puts her trust 
In reeking tube and iron shard — 
All valiant dust that builds on dust, 
And guarding calls not Thee to guard— 
For frantic boast and foolish word, 
Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord." 

Yet it must be admitted that the tumult of the 
Captains and the Kings seems to the people to be 
the force supreme. And it may make very visi- 
ble changes on the maps and create new names 
for the histories and for a generation seem to be 
controlling character and life, but the long view 
of history and the deeper insight will lead us to 
look further still for any permanent source of 
help and hope for China. For those forces are 
the greatest which most affect character. Con- 
fucianism is so powerful and so hopeless because 
of its enormous influence upon the character of 

»2 



China 

the people. Determinations of territorial bound- 
aries and assignments of political authority are 
minor and insignificant in comparison with the 
forces which run down to the roots of personal 
life. And of these forces time will show that 
none is running deeper or spreading more widely 
than Christianity. 

Christianity was first brought to China by the 
Nestorians early in the sixth century, and the 
only known traces of their work are preserved 
in the famous Nestorian tablet found in the Prov- 
ince of Shansi in 1725. The Roman Catholics 
began their work in the thirteenth century, and 
with glorious devotion, and some readiness to tem- 
porize, to flatter, to dissemble and to deceive. 
Their work grew greatly, winning at last the 
favor of the Emperor Kanghi until Clement XI. 
joined issue with him over ancestral worship and 
some other ceremonies, and then the missionaries 
were expelled from the country. From 1767 to 
1820 they were persecuted, ordered to leave or 
slain, but continued apparently to conduct them- 
selves in the manner of which one of their own 
number, Pere Repa complained, saying, "If our 
European missionaries in China would conduct 
themselves with less ostentation^ and accommo- 

' Vid. also Monseigneur Reynoud's Another China, p. 39, which is a Ro- 
man Catholic view. 

-53 



Missions and Politics 

date their manners to persons of all ranks and 
conditions, the number of converts would be im- 
mensely increased. Their garments are made of 
the richest materials . . . and as they never 
mix with the people, they make but few con- 
verts." As a matter of fact, however, they have 
made many converts and doubtless many good 
Christians. Protestant Missions began with Mor- 
rison in 1807, and together with Roman Catholic 
Missions were recognized and legalized by the 
treaties made after the war of i860. Article VIII. 
of the British treaty reads "The Christian religion 
as professed by Protestants or Roman Catholics 
inculcates the practice of virtue and teaches men 
to do as they would be done by. Persons teach- 
ing it or professing it, therefore, shall alike be 
entitled to the protection of the Chinese authori- 
ties ; nor shall any such, peaceably pursuing their 
calling, and not offending against the laws, be 
persecuted or interfered with." 

Thus introduced and recognized two things 
have prevented Christianity's exercise of its full 
power One has been the difficulty of adjusting 
it to the Chinese mind in such a way as not 
to commit it to anything unessential which is 
repugnant to the Chinese mind, and to fit it pre- 
cisely to the fundamental spiritual needs and ca- 
54 



China 

pacities of the race. I asked one of the ablest 
missionaries in China, what were the great prob- 
lems of the work in China, and he replied in- 
stantly, "They are one — How to present Christ 
to the Chinese mind." There is nothing else on 
earth like that mind, so full of distortions, of 
atrophies, of abnormalities, of curious twists 
and deficiencies, and how to avoid all unneces- 
sary prejudice and difficulty, and to make use of 
prepared capacity and notion so as to gain for the 
Christian message the most open and unbiased 
reception, is a problem unsolved as yet and be- 
yond any of our academic questionings here. 
For example, the Chinese idea of filial piety has 
in it much that is Christian and noble and true, 
and yet much that is absurd and untrue. To 
recognize and avail of the former aspects and not 
to alienate and anger in stripping off the latter, is 
one phase of this problem. Where is there one 
more wonderfully interesting and more baffling ? 
The second thing that has hampered Chris- 
tianity has been its political entanglements. The 
last few months have given a characteristic illus- 
tration of this. The murder of two German 
missionaries in Shantung province was at once 
made the pretext of seizing a bay with its pro- 
tecting fortifications, and bade fair to precipitate 

55 



Missions and Politics 

the dismemberment of the Chinese Empire. Is 
it wonderful that the Chinese distrust the char- 
acter of the Mission movement, are sceptical as 
to its non-political character, and view Chris- 
tianity with suspicion ? China has disliked the 
Western Nations from the start. Their overbear- 
ing willfulness, their remorseless aggression, their 
humiliating victories, their very peccable diplo- 
macy have all strengthened her dislike. The un- 
fortunate occasion of the first war which brought 
Great Britain forward as the defender of the 
wretched opium traffic, which the Chinese Cen- 
tral Government at least was making sincere 
efforts to suppress, placed the Western Nations 
in the position of supporting by arms what China 
knew to be morally wrong. The general bear- 
ing of the foreign commercial class, ignorant of 
the language, of the people and of their preju- 
dices has increased the anti-foreign feeling of the 
Chinese yet more. "^ The charge that the mission- 
ary movement as a religious movement is respon- 
sible for the anti-foreign feeling is fantastic and 
it is not supported by facts. Missions have made 
a hundred friends to every foe. 

The missionary would undoubtedly in any 
event have had to share some of this hatred, 
as a member of one of the objectionable na- 

56 



China 

tionalities; but the Chinese are capable of dis- 
tinctions, and would soon have learned that the 
Mission movement was sharply distinct from all 
political bearings, if indeed it had been so. But 
from the beginning of foreign intercourse, the / 
trader and the missionary have been classed to- \^ 
gether. The same rights have been claimed for 
each, and the claim was enforced by war in the 
case of the trader, and the consequent treaties 
included the missionary. Ever since, through 
the legations, missionary rights under the treaties 
have perhaps been the chief matter of business, 
and outrages on missionaries have been followed 
by demands for reparation and indemnity. No 
Government was willing to surrender its duty to 
protect its citizens, and even if the missionaries 
had refused protection, it would have been forced 
on them for the sake of maintaining traditional 
prestige, and defending traders and trade inter- 
ests from assault. 

In consequence, the missionary work has been 
unable to appear as the propaganda of a kingdom 
that is not of this world. The Chinese officials 
are unable, with few exceptions, to conceive of 
it except as a pari of the political scheme of 
Western Nations to acquire influence in China, 
and to subvert the Government and the principles 
57 



Missions and Politics 

of loyalty on which it rests. "It is our opinion 
that foreign missionaries are in very truth the 
source whence springs all trouble in China," so 
says one of the Chinese "Blue Books." "For- 
eigners come to China from a distance of several 
ten thousands of miles, and from about ten dif- 
ferent countries with only two objects in view; 
namely, trade and religious propagandism. With 
the former they intend to gradually deprive China 
of her wealth, and with the latter they likewise 
seek to steal away the hearts of her people. The 
ostensible pretext they put forward is, the culti- 
vation of friendly relations: what their hidden 
purpose is, is unfathomable."^ Even a Roman 
Catholic priest, and his people are the worst of- 
fenders in this, writes: "Whence comes this 
obstinate determination to reject Christianity ? It 
is not religious fanaticism, for no people are so 
far gone as the Chinese in scepticism and indiffer- 
ence. One may be a disciple of Confucius or of 
"Lao Tse, Mussulman or Buddhist, the Chinese 
Government does not regard it. It is only against 
the Christian religion it seeks to defend itself. It 
sees all Europe following on the heels of the 
Apostles of Christ, Europe with her ideas, her 
civilization, and with that it will have absolutely 

• Michie's China and Christianity, p. loi. 
58 



Oiina 

nothing to do, being rightly or wrongly satisfied 
with the ways of its fathers." ^ 

Out of a very profound ignorance of the sub- 
ject of Missions in China, Mr. Henry Norman, 
after alluding to ''the minute results of good and 
the considerable results of harm " they produce, 
says, "At any rate, in considering the future of 
China, the missionary influence cannot be counted 
upon for any good."^ I believe that its aifilia- 
tions with the political and commercial schemes 
of the West, which are Mr. Norman's deities, and 
the way France and Germany make it a cat's-paw 
are seriously hindering it from doing its purely 
spiritual work; but even with this hindrance and 
the difficulty of a wise adjustment to the Chinese 
mind, with its aptitudes and incapacities, it is the 
most penetrating and permeating force working 
in China to lead her on to the new day, and its 
messengers are the heralds of the dawn. "Be- 
lieve nobody when he sneers at them," said 
Colonel Denby. "The man is simply not 
posted," The 1,300 scholars, whose memorial I 
have already quoted, know better than to sneer. 
"Every province is full of chapels," they wrote, 
"whilst we have only one temple in each county 

' Michie's Missionaries in China, p. 67. 

'Norman's Peoples and Politics of the Far East, pp. 280-282, 304-308. 

59 



Missions and Politics 

for our sage Confucius. Is this not painful ? Let 
religious instruction be given in each county. 
Let all the charitable institutions help. Let all the 
unowned temples and charity guilds be made into 
temples of the Confucian religion, and thus make 
the people good, and stop the progress of strange 
doctrines." When Bishop Moule, who is still 
living at Hangchow, came to China, there were 
only forty Protestants in the Empire. Now there 
are 80,000, and in addition the multitudes enrolled 
in the Church of Rome. They are erring who 
are not reckoning with the powerful work the 
Christian Church is doing amid the foundations 
of the Chinese Empire. She blows few trumpets 
from the housetops. She boasts with no naval 
displays. Her trust is not put in reeking tube and 
iron shard. Guarding she calls on God to guard, 
and under His guarding is doing at the roots of 
Chinese life the work of the new creation, and 
out of her work a Church is rising of a new sort. 
It will have its own heresies and trials, but it will 
have elements of power which have belonged to 
none of God's other peoples ; and I think it will 
lean back on the rock of the rule of the Living 
God which we are abandoning for the rule of our 
own wills. And whether the Chinese race shall 
serve the future as one nation or as the peaceful 
60 



China 

and submissive fragments of a once miglity Em- 
pire, this mucli is true : — the service they will ren- 
der will have been touched by Christ whose 
movement will go on "until all the cities, towns, 
villages and hamlets of that vast Empire have the 
teacher and professor of religion living in them, 
until their children are taught, their liberties un- 
derstood, their rights assured, their poor cared 
for, their literature purified, and their condition 
bettered in this world by the full revelation of 
another made known to them,"^ out of which 
One has come greater than Confucius, greater 
than Lao Tse, to dwell among men and be their 
Living King. 

• Wells Williams' Middle Kingdom, Vol. ii., p. 371. 



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